This discovery by Nobel prize winner Dr. Osama Shimomura known as Green Fluorescent has revolutionized molecular biology. Movement of living molecules generally can be seen but the advent of GFP made the invisible visible. The protein, found in jellyfish helps researchers track substances of all kinds, in real time, and show how they mark cells, maintain them and function in concert with other cells.
I met Geraint Parry on Twitter, where he tweets under @LiverpoolPlants about his research. Fortunately, my colleagues were able to confirm that he indeed is real and a plant cell biologist studying the nuclear pore complex. He also scored 6 out of 10 points from the “10 signs you might be a plant biologist” post, plus I awarded him two more points for having a picture of Arabidopsis thaliana as avatar. All evidence combined, Geraint immediately qualified as today’s Face of Plant Cell Biology – thanks for taking part, Geraint! :-)) Please check out Geraint’s website for more information and...
Plants don’t do much all day except sitting around and photosynthesising.Right? Wrong!! Plants move constantly, but much slower than animals. Therefore they manage to trick us by pretending to be really boring. But if you put up a hidden camera, take a picture every minute or hour and put it together to a time-lapse video, they won’t be able to fool you any longer. The “Plants in Motion” website created by Roger P. Hangarter has a really nice collection of plant time-lapse videos, ranging from germination to tropism (directional movement in response to an external signal such as light...
John Runions is a little bit like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – only that his two identities both have a Dr title. Most of his time he spends working, teaching and playing with the microscopes at Oxford Brookes University. But when nobody is watching, he puts on his cape of knowledge, takes his sword of science enthusiasm and leaps on air as “Dr Molecule” for BBC Radio Oxford. John’s website is like a little treasure chest, full with microscopy images and movies. You can even watch one of his presentations from the last GARNet meeting 2011 on YouTube...
It’s Friday and therefore I present you with two beautiful animations about the inner workings of a cell. Bring a packed lunch, your camera and a big bag of excitement and hop on the tour bus guiding you through an animal and a plant cell. “Over there you can see the world’s largest mitochondrion. Few people know that it was the inspiration for the Michelin man…” I hope that these videos will not only show you how complex and fascinating cells are, but also how much similarities there are between animal and plant cells. Cells rock!
I gotta feeling that this song’s gonna be a useful song… written by Mr Hsu to the music of the BlackEyed Peas.
Apoptosis is a mechanism in which death of an unhealthy cell is initiated and orchestrated through a tightly controlled molecular cascade. The steps of this cascade are visualised in this video. Drew Berry, who created the stunning animation, says: “The technique I used to make it work was difficult and very slow to pull off. The whole 4 min sequence took me around 12 months to research, construct and generate the imagery. I think visually it is my most successful piece at showing the mechanisms that emerge from randomly wandering, cytoplasmic molecules and membrane bound receptors.” (Molecular Animation of...
Recent Comments